\"MATRIX\" to provide TIA-like capabilities to states

Because no bad idea (or bad name) remains unused for long, the state of
Florida has been working to create an information network that gathers
information about its residents to aid in "anti-terrorism" and law
enforcement. According to this article in the Washington Post,
Florida is now working to go multi-state, with the help of the federal
government, in a project it calls Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information
Exchange (M.A.T.R.I.X.).

Now, I'm not going to say that the people who come up with these names are
idiots, because frankly, I appreciate the fact that they create names that are
so well designed to create fear and derision. However, if I ever create a big
brother system, you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to have a good old-
fashioned Japanese name, like "Puppy." If you aren't familiar with
Sony'sPuppy
product, it is a fingerprint identification unit that is used to secure your
Mac (or PC, if you have such a thing) with a fingerprint. By all accounts, it
is a nice design, storing the fingerprint data inside of the reader, so that
you can't grab the data from your machine.

But, I digress, let's get back to the system that Florida is creating.
MATRIX (homed here at the Institute for
Intergovernmental Research, "a Florida-based nonprofit
research and training organization, specializes in law enforcement, juvenile
justice, and criminal justice issues"), is "a pilot effort to increase and
enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity
information between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies."

Note how deftly the work de-funded by the congress has popped up with a $4M
grant from the "Department of Justice" (which shall
remain in quotes until Ashcroft is gone) so that thirteen states (Alabama,
Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, and Utah) can persue the original
aims of the US Department of Defense's TIA
program (albeit without the hard concentration on terrorism).

So, what are they looking at?

According to their web page, they're starting with public information,
including:

criminal history

driver license data

vehicle registration records

incarceration/corrections records including digitized photographs

with significant amounts of public data record entries
I'm stuck with a couple of questions right away:

Where did they mean to put the comma before the "including digitized photographs"? I have put it above with the incarceration records, but since their original list was just strung together with commas, it could indicate that the photos were coming from all sources, not just the prison data.

What are "significant amounts of public data record entries" and where do they come from? I'm going to assume that we're talking data from government sources, so we're likely to be seeing certain tax info (like property ownership stuff), but it is unclear from the system whether governmental data such as the voting rolls will be included.

Then we have the catch-all, "Provision has been made for the inclusion of data
sources from additional states, should expansion be authorized." This is the
clause that concerns people. Right now, it appears that there is no
authorization to provide this data, but it may be forthcoming.

Who made the system?

This is an interesting case. According to the article in the 'Post, the
creator (Hank Asher, founder of Seisint) volunteered
to write the system for free. Also interesting is that he has a bit of a
sketchy past, with questions about drug smuggling and acting as an informant
to police about such acts.

Matrix project leads point out that Mr. Asher has never been arrested or
charged, much less convicted, and therefore state that he isn't a legal risk.
However, it makes you wonder what kind of back doors might exist in a system
whose sponsors say will have strict control over who can access what and which
will be available through "secure" web sites. I hope they're not running
Windows.